Abstract
Exceeding planetary boundaries, and especially climate change, requires economies worldwide to decarbonize and to incorporate principles of sustainable development. Transforming a traditional economy into a sustainable bioeconomy by replacing fossil resources through renewable biogenic resources offers a solution to this end. However, seemingly opposing transition perspectives (i.e., technology-based vs. socio-ecological) lead to fragmented efforts, and the exact form of the transition pathway to the goal of a bioeconomy remains unclear. We examine the issue by involving an international expert sample in a Delphi survey and subsequent cross-impact analysis. Based on the experts’ views, we present a list of events necessary to achieve the transformation ranked by the experts to reflect their urgency. The cross-impact analysis facilitates combining the eight most urgent events to create an integrated model of the transition to a sustainable bioeconomy. Our findings suggest that, rather than bioeconomy strategies, investment in the relevant sectors currently constitutes the main bottleneck hindering such a transition.
Highlights
The transgression of planetary boundaries—and most prominently climate change—endangers the well-being of human societies, which depends on the integrity of the earth system, requiring humanity to identify a safe operating space for future societal development within planetary boundaries [1]
There is a strong call from scientists, citizens, politicians, and business leaders to transform the economy into a sustainable one, where exiting the era of fossil resources and commencing the era of the bioeconomy offers a promising option [2,3,4]
We conducted a cross-impact analysis (CIA) combined with interpretive structural modeling (ISM) to be able to visualize a model of the proposed transition pathway
Summary
Endangers the well-being of human societies, which depends on the integrity of the earth system, requiring humanity to identify a safe operating space for future societal development within planetary boundaries [1]. Against this background, there is a strong call from scientists, citizens, politicians, and business leaders to transform the economy into a sustainable one, where exiting the era of fossil resources and commencing the era of the bioeconomy offers a promising option [2,3,4]. Two seemingly opposing perspectives in the transition from a fossil to a biobased economy emerged [12]
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